My name is Saul!I'm an award winning Word of Mouth Marketer, Professional Speaker on the subjects of Social Media, Customer Service and best of all... Word of Mouth.I collect Air Force One sneakers and think you should hire me... (as a consultant) to teach you how to get your company doing interesting things!

Photos from the Drupal Conference in San Francisco, CA 2010

Tuesday, Apr 04, 2008

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What is an online relationship worth?

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I have seen the future and the future is in Social Media!

I am sure that isn’t the first time you have been told or read that proclamation but I am actually hear to tell you that I have seen the Future and the Future is in Social Media…and I saw it in full force this past weekend in New York City.

Maybe I should explain!

While in New York I attended an amazing Breakfast hosted by RohitBhargava, writer of Personality Not Included. The reason for the Breakfast was so Rohit could ask a group of marketing and blogger types (all attending Blogger Social) what would be a great way to promote his new book. Many incredible ideas were passed along and the best would be executed on.

I would love to tell you the winning idea but I don’t want to scoop Rohit on this!

After the event, ShashiBellamkonda and I spoke about the reason this was so interesting and we both agreed that it was the fact that here were 20 or so really smart people all offering up ideas and insights all for nothing…well OK there was free food but besides that there was no other compensation and we were all cool with that.

Yes, people were freely sharing ideas without any hesitation or intrepidation!

Just so I am finishing my thought here I should mention that these 20 folks are the type who in their day jobs would charge big money for their time and ideas but they were doing this for the fun of it and because for most of the people they have a relationship with Rohit that was formed by communicating online in some form.

This made me think long and hard about my connections on various Social Media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn and how I should probably be a bit pickier on who I connect with since my view of the value of an online relationship is very different then it was a few days ago.

Now you could assume that I’m saying that you should make a bunch of online friends so you have more people to take advantage of when you need help with something but rather I am saying you should make a bunch of online friends because the value of friendship is unmeasurable and you never know when you may need a little help with something…in the future.

Saul – it was great to meet you at Blogger Social and you had some brilliant ideas to share at the breakfast. You’re totally right about the power of building a network and how you really do have to rely on the friendships you have built when you are in a time of need (like, for example, in promoting a book). I did post the winning idea on the book blog at http://www.personalitynotincluded.com/blog/ … so feel free to post about it now, and thanks for waiting.